3. MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE

~ 132 ~ by a peasantry who worked the soil on shares with the owners. The agricultural development was one of the glories of Moslem Spain and one of the Arabs’ lasting gifts to the land, for Spanish gardens have preserved to this day a “Moorish” imprint. One of the best-known gardens is the Generalife (from Al-Janat al-arif, the inspector’s paradise), a Nasrid monument of the late thirteenth century whose villa was one of the outlying buildings of the Alhambra. This garden, proverbial for its extensive shade, falling waters and soft breeze, was terraced in the form of an amphitheatre and irrigated by streams which, after forming numerous cascades, lost themselves among the flowers, shrubs and trees represented today by a few gigantic cypresses and myrtles.66 Charles Sinobose, a French author, writes that the Spanish Arabs adopted the method of irrigation by canals. They also dug large wells. Those who discovered new sources of water were given